May 29, 2007

'Hidden Palms': The return of 'The O.C.'s' Oliver

It’s hard not to feel a little bit tired while watching “Hidden Palms.” The show is turning up at the tail end of May sweeps, and I don’t know about you, but I’m a little weary and more than ready to spend at least some of my evenings barbecuing or playing catch outside.

As was the case with the sturdy ABC thriller “Traveler” (which has its second airing Wednesday since its May 10 premiere), “Hidden Palms” is on the summer schedule of a broadcast network — another fact that doesn’t inspire much energetic confidence in its future. Still, even if I’m feeling a bit lethargic and lazy — like a kid let out of school for the summer — I’ve tried to evaluate whether “Palms” has at least a little escapist value. And the answer is, yes, it has a little. But I need more than that to drag me away from watching cicadas crawl out of their shells.

The show does come with a fancy pedigree — “Palms” is the brainchild of “Dawson’s Creek” creator Kevin Williamson and “Huff” director/executive producer Scott Winant. So it’s no surprise that the show features highly articulate teens, dysfunctional families and secrets lurking behind the manicured facades of homes in a well-to-do community.

That “O.C.”/“Dawson’s” vibe is embodied by the show’s main character, Johnny Miller (Taylor Handley, who played Oliver on "The O.C."). When we meet him in the show’s first scene, he’s a preppy, no-nonsense kid working on his trigonometry homework. One scene later, a year after a family tragedy, Johnny’s moving into a new house in Palm Springs with his mother and her new husband. Johnny’s fresh out of rehab, and sporting tastefully rebellious post-rehab threads and hair.

In a series of meet-cutes that strain credulity, Johnny meets several of the teens who live on his street. There’s Greta, the enigmatic beauty who likes to run through the sprinklers on the golf course; Liza, the nerdy neighbor who tends to blow things up in her garage lab (which is also the perch she uses to keep tabs on the neighborhood); and Cliff, a glib young man who has Secrets of His Own.

As on any soap of this kind, most of the adults are damaged and needy and quite often less together than their kids. Sharon Lawrence (“NYPD Blue”) makes the best of her brief screen time as a boozy mom addicted to plastic surgery and young men. Another “NYPD Blue” veteran, Gail O’Grady, doesn’t get much to work with as Johnny’s brittle mother, whose infidelity destroyed her marriage with Johnny’s dad. The least together member of the younger generation is Nikki, who turns up in the second episode; she’s a post-rehab relapser (played by Tessa Thompson of “Veronica Mars”) who threatens Johnny’s tenuous friendship with Greta.

This is one of those only-on-TV communities where the main characters are constantly thrown together at country club parties and around pools; they speak in the self-conscious, therapy-driven patter that has become old hat on TV. It may have seemed fresh a dozen years ago, but it’s turning into just another TV cliche.

But there are signs that “Hidden Palms” wants to be more than just an amalgamation of teen-soap cliches. Leslie Jordan, the outrageous Beverly Leslie on “Will & Grace,” plays a drag queen who also serves as Johnny’s sprightly but tough AA sponsor. And there aren’t many programs that would make a teen’s commitment to sobriety one of the foundations of the series.

Still, “Hidden Palms” will never be mistaken for classic-era “O.C.,” not yet, anyway. All things considered, there’s too little to latch on to here. Handley, while easy on the eyes, isn’t enough to build a show around, and the adults, and more than a few of the kids, remain ciphers. And the truth is, we’ve been here before. Though “Hidden Palms” isn’t outright bad, I’d rather be grilling a few cicadas.

I personally like to watch Hiden Palms! It's great to watch...I agree it's not the best show...but it's good and I think that it wouldn't be fair to cancelled the show caue maybe there isn't a lot of person watching but at least for people like me it would be less fair and plus, you ended the season like this so we need to know what's gonna happend! So think about it... if you don't air another season well I will know why people tell it's crap, it's because you guys get beat after one punch and then quit...at your place I would stand up and make a better season! thank you very much...

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